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Reconfiguring the Turkish Nation in the 1930S Nationalism and Ethnic Politics ISSN: 1353-7113 (Print) 1557-2986 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fnep20 Reconfiguring the Turkish nation in the 1930s Soner Çağaptay To cite this article: Soner Çağaptay (2002) Reconfiguring the Turkish nation in the 1930s, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 8:2, 67-82, DOI: 10.1080/13537110208428662 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13537110208428662 Published online: 24 Dec 2007. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 723 Citing articles: 7 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fnep20 Reconfiguring the Turkish Nation in the 1930s SONER ÇAĞAPTAY This article studies Turkish nationalism during the 1930s. In this decade of Kemalism par excellence or High Kemalism, the rise of ethnicist nationalism in Turkey was accompanied by the ascent of the 'Turkish history thesis'. The article presents an analysis of Turkish nationalism in this era through Ankara's population resettlement policies. Consequently, it examines Turkish nationalism through the interaction between the Kemalist state and the country's minorities. 'The Kurds of the Eastern provinces, the Arabs of South-Eastern Anatolia, the Moslems from Russia, the territories detached under the Treaty of Lausanne, the Greek islands, Greece, the Balkans and Roumania will be scattered among pure Turkish populations, so that they may lose the characteristics of the countries and districts of their birth, and, in a generation, be Turkish in speech, dress, habits and outlook, undistinguishable from their old-established neighbours. ... By the present policy ... Turkey hopes to build up a well-populated and homogenous state." Nationalism during the Kemalist era is a crucial episode of recent Turkish history, whose legacy seems to have imprinted itself on modern Turkey. Whereas some students of Turkish studies assert that Turkish nationalism in this decade promoted a territorial definition of the nation,2 others claim that Islam, more than anything, defined Turkishness in this era.3 In this paper, I will argue that a juxtaposition of territory, religion and ethnicity in the 1930s produced a definition of the Turkish nation that was more nuanced than that suggested by either of these approaches. In doing this, I will focus on a largely ignored aspect of the 1930s and study Turkish nationalism, primarily, through the practices of the Turkish state.4 Immediately after the establishment of the Turkish republic in 1923, Mustafa Kemal (Atatiirk) and his Kemalist cadres started to mould Turkey Soner Çagaptay, Yale University Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol.8, No.2, Summer 2002, pp.67-82 PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON 68 NATIONALISM and ETHNIC POLITICS into a nation-state. However, it was during the High Kemalist years, 'Kemalism par excellence', of the 1930s, that nationalism grew into Turkey's official ideology.5 From 1931, when Turkey's ruling Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi - CHP) began to consolidate its monopoly of power, until 1938, when Atatiirk died, the idea that the Turks were a glorious nation rose to prominence. As late as 1912, Turkey (Anatolia and Thrace) had been part of the vast multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. Muslims (Turks, Kurds and others) and Christians (Greeks, Armenians, and the others who made up 20 per cent of its population) coexisted in Turkey. Fifteen years later, in 1927, the Christian population in the country had dropped to as little as 2.64 per cent.6 The Armenian catastrophe and the departure of most Greeks from Turkey, events, which Horowitz describes as 'ethnic homogenization, religious singularity and nationalization'7 had irreversibly changed Turkey. Another demographic change during this period was caused by an influx of Muslim immigrants. Throughout the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, many Ottoman Muslims, including Turks, but also Bosnian, Greek, Serbian, Macedonian, Albanian and Bulgarian Muslims (Pomaks),8 who faced extermination in the newly independent Balkan states, fled to Anatolia.9 In addition, many Turks, Circassians10 and other Muslims arrived in Anatolia from the Black Sea basin. (These had been fleeing Russian expansionism in southern Russia, the Crimea and the Caucasus since the late eighteenth century.11) The immigrants joined Turkey's autochthonous Muslim groups of Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Georgians and Lazes,12 and strengthened Anatolia's Muslim and Turkish demographic base at the expense of its Christian communities.13 Because of these population shifts, by the 1920s, Turkey was home to a largely Turkish, yet multi-ethnic, Muslim majority.14 In this population, the Kurds were the most significant non-Turkish nationality.15 Hence, as a nation-state, Kemalist Turkey was bound to deal with the following issues: • How would it accommodate the aforementioned Muslim immigrants? • What would the relations be between it and autochthonous Muslims, especially the Kurds? • And last but not least, did anybody in Turkey remember the Christians, especially the Armenians? During the 1920s, with secularism as its corner stone, Kemalism turned its back on Islam as well as irredentism16 and promoted a territorial definition of the Turkish nation.17 An emphasis on Turkey (Anatolia and Thrace) became a visible tendency within Turkish nationalism. Article 88 of the Turkish constitution of 1924 stipulated that 'the People of Turkey, RECONFIGURING THE TURKISH NATION IN THE 1930s 69 regardless of religion and race, are Turks as regards Turkish citizenship'.18 Atatiirk declared that 'the people of Turkey, who have established the Turkish state, are called the Turkish nation'.19 He emphasized a shared past and interests and the desire to live together as the common denominators of the nation.20 The official definition of the Turkish nation focused on a voluntaristic-territorial formula. Accordingly, for instance, Article 5 of CHP's 1927 by-laws stipulated that 'the party was convinced that the strongest link among the citizens was unity in language, unity in feelings and unity in ideas'.21 Moreover, Article 88 of the Turkish Constitution dictated that persons 'granted Turkish citizenship by law are Turks'.22 This is where the immigrant non-Turkish Muslims came in. The Kemalists saw it feasible to assimilate them into the Turkish nation. In fact, Islam had already been an avenue of inclusion in the Turkish nation. Being in Turkey had provided them with the elements of 'assimilability under the Turkish language and Muslim religion'.23 In fact, by the 1920s very few immigrant non-Turkish Muslims still spoke their native languages.24 The Kemalists expected that autochthonous Muslims would assimilate fast, too. In a speech to the Turkish parliament in 1920, Mustafa Kemal said: 'You, the members of the high parliament, are not only Turks, or Circassians, or Kurds, or Lazes, you are the Islamic element made up of all these.'25 Yet the local Muslims did not have similar incentives as the immigrant Muslims to merge into the Turkish nation. They had neither been uprooted from their homelands, nor lost their cultural and social structures due to expulsion. Additionally, these lived in compact territories. Among them, the Kurds were the majority in large parts of south-eastern Turkey.26 Of all the non-Turkish Muslim groups, they were the least unlikely to assimilate. The Rise of High Kemalism and the Turkish History Thesis In 1931, the Kemalist regime initiated a policy to centralize power in the hands of the ruling Republican People's Party (CHP). This was the beginning of High Kemalism under Atatiirk. This era was marked by the following developments: firstly, independent organizations and associations disbanded themselves and joined the ruling party;27 secondly, the wall between the CHP and the Turkish state gradually collapsed - between 1935 and 1937 the CHP moved to merge with the state;28 thirdly, during this era, Kemalist nationalism was redefined and played a bigger role than before in Turkish politics. The emergence of the 'Turkish History Thesis' marked the redefinition and ascendancy of Turkish nationalism.29 The thesis stressed that the Turks were a great and ancient race.30 One of its seminal works, Turk Tarihinin 70 NATIONALISM and ETHNIC POLITICS Ana Hatlanna Methal ('Introduction to the General Themes of Turkish History') claimed that thousands of years ago the Turks had lived in Central Asia, where they had created a bright civilization around an inner sea. When this inner sea had dried up due to climatic changes, they had left Central Asia and moved in all directions to civilize the rest of the world. They had gone to China in the East; to India in the South; to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Anatolia, Greece and Italy in the West.31 Thus, the Turkish race was the creator of civilizations in these lands, as well in Anatolia, which was the Turkish homeland since the Turks were its autochthonous population.32 Over time, the Turks had 'crossed with other races'; however, the Turkish language had preserved their memories, cultural characteristics and everything else that made them a nation, including the Turks' most cherished possession, the Turkish intellect.33 Since the Turkish language had preserved the nation, one had to speak it to prove that one was of ethnic Turkish descent and was eligible for membership in the Turkish nation. This ethnicist definition of the nation through language put non-Turkish speakers in a precarious position. Yet the Kemalist regime did not view non- Turks as an undifferentiated mass. It saw the Muslims and the non-Muslims differently. Lectures given by Recep (Peker) (1888-1950), secretary- general of the CHP and one of the prominent Kemalist ideologues, elaborated on this. Peker started in a positive, yet patronizing manner towards non-Muslims. 'We need to voice our ideas towards our Christian and Jewish citizens with committed clarity. Our party sees these citizens as full Turks, on condition that they participate in what we have just expressed, the unity in language and in ideals.'34 Then, however, Peker inserted a caveat.
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